The present invention relates to radio service area quality information acquisition system, and particularly to radio service area quality information acquisition system to acquire quality information of a radio area formed by a radio communication system.
In recent years, in a radio communication system, demand for data communication is increasing in addition to voice call, and various communication systems have been adopted in order to realize higher speed/higher quality radio communication. As an example of the communication system, Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) in which user signals of voice or the like are code-spread and multiplexed, and communication is performed, 1× Evolution-Data Only (1×EV-DO) specialized for data communication, or the like becomes widespread, and even in a mobile communication environment, a user is allowed to perform various communications. In order to efficiently use various radio communication systems, it is necessary that the quality of a radio area formed of radio waves transmitted from a base transceiver station satisfies a quality condition (interference condition) required by the radio communication system. In the environment in which the quality of the radio area does not satisfy the required condition, any high speed radio communication system can hardly prove its worth.
At the time of designing installation of base transceiver stations, a carrier (communication company) installs a base transceiver station at an actual site in accordance with an optimum station installation condition obtained by desk review, such as radio area simulation, to ensure desired quality in a radio area. However, at the actual site, especially at a densely-populated area, the land form is changed by building construction or the like with a passage of time, and at the same time, the transmission environment of radio waves is also changed. Since the change of the transmission environment greatly influences the servicability of the radio communication service and user satisfaction, it is necessary that the carrier periodically checks the quality of the radio area, and confirms whether the original performance of the radio communication system can be provided to the user. Besides, with respect to the occurrence of a user claim, the radio service area quality of the claim object point is immediately confirmed, and it is necessary to quickly determine whether the cause is a defect in a wireless facility or is a radio environment. According to this result, it becomes necessary to fix/correct the wireless facility or to change the facility installation state of an antenna or the like in order to avoid the influence due to the environmental factor.
From now, when Voice over IP (VoIP) service in a radio communication system is developed, Quality of Service (QoS) function to assign a radio link with priority to, for example, a communication service required to be realtime, such as voice, becomes important. In order to realize this function on the radio communication system, as compared with the area quality required by the radio communication system of the related art having no QoS function, higher area quality is always required.
From the above, the confirmation of the radio service area quality is an important work for the carrier to provide the radio communication service, and it is one of important problems how to perform this easily.
FIG. 1 shows an example of a working form of an area quality check of the related art.
In the area quality check of the radio area, the following process is generally performed. First, a radio wave measurement machine and a positioning device (GPS or the like) are mounted in a vehicle, and while driving is performed in an area to be measured, radio wave measurement and positioning are simultaneously performed. The radio wave measurement result and positioning information are continuously recorded in a recording device during the running. After all the measurement is finished, the measurement result is subjected to a map matching processing on a map (for example, a processing to display the strength of the received radio waves by different colors at the measured positions on the map), and the planar grasp of the area quality in the object area becomes possible by seeing the processing result. For example, the measured transmission and received power, the ratio of a carrier wave to an interference wave, and the position information are used, and the map matching view in which the level of values are expressed by different colors at corresponding positions on the map is confirmed, so that it is possible to easily grasp a weak electric field region in the object area and a call processing performance deteriorated region. By grasping such information, the installation condition (for example, antenna orientation, base transceiver station transmission power, etc.) of the base transceiver station facility is changed and adjusted, and the radio wave condition in the object area can be improved.
Besides, there is a proposal relating to area quality information acquisition in which a user terminal is used, the user terminal transmits radio wave information to a base transceiver station side by some trigger, and an upper operation maintenance center stores the wave information into a server, and automatically edits the information into a necessary form (for example, map matching of the radio wave information).
For example, patent document 1 discloses an apparatus which includes position information/measurement value reception means for receiving position information of a mobile station transmitted from the mobile station and a measurement value of wireless quality, and develops the received position information and the measurement value of the received radio wave quality on a map. Patent document 2 discloses a system and a method in which when a periodic report timer is time-out, the position information and quality information of a mobile station are reported to a base transceiver station. Patent document 3 discloses that when a measurement start condition is satisfied, with respect to a cellular phone, transmitting/pause is repeated a specified number of times, and communication quality to antennas for cellular phones installed at respective places is measured. Besides, it is disclosed that when a measurement value transmission condition is satisfied, the measurement value is transmitted from the cellular phone to the communication terminal of a data collection center.
Patent document 1: JP-A-2002-152104
Patent document 2: JP-A-2000-341204
Patent document 3: JP-A-2002-335202